Editorial: Elect supporters of ethics reform

The election has formally begun. Completed ballots are finding their way, through the mail or drop-off boxes, to county clerks’ offices. There they will be validated and stored until the vote-counting begins on Primary Election Day, Aug. 13.

At the same time, a good-government commission, founded in February, has finished a series of public meetings and will issue a final report by Dec. 1 on what reforms are needed.

These two things are connected. Lawmakers have been halfhearted about enacting the panel’s initial recommendations. And that plainly suggests that the pathway toward higher ethical standards for elected officials runs through this year’s election. To get better government, Hawaii needs to elect the people willing to make the changes.

The panel, the Commission to Increase Standards of Conduct, last week concluded five public meetings conducted over two months. This followed an interim report with recommendations for improvements.

The impetus for all of this was the uncovering of a corruption scandal involving state Sen. J. Kalani English, the former majority leader who had left his post, and state Rep. Ty Cullen, then the vice chairman of the powerful House Finance Committee. They both admitted to charges of accepting money from a wastewater company executive for introducing, and then killing, legislation.

Democratic majority leadership at the state Capitol, stunned by the brazenness of the acts, quickly adopted House Resolution 9. The legislation notes that “certain safeguards, including ethics, lobbying, and campaign spending laws, are in place to prevent this loss of public confidence in and good reputation of governmental institutions and their officers.”

Well, not so much. Apparently the safeguards, where they do exist, are insufficient. And so far there’s been a resistance to putting reforms where they’re most needed: at the decision points where powerful politicians can most easily be corrupted.

The resolution aimed to strengthen the guardrails by convening the commission, but only about half of its initial proposals passed. Among these was Senate Bill 555, which prohibits political fundraising events during legislative sessions. But lawmakers did not do what was necessary: banning all fundraising, including the one-on-one solicitation of donations outside of scheduled events, during session.

That’s just one example that highlights how much more work must be done. Broadly, the moneyed interests that want to bend legislation in directions that favor them take advantage of a system that is still opaque at crucial points.

The goal should be to shine more light at those points to deter self-serving dealmaking, and to reduce how power is concentrated among a few key legislative brokers. The misconduct by English and Cullen serves as a case in point.

Many bills are introduced by request — by whom is generally not disclosed. Knowing who is behind an initiative would give the public at least a heads-up about who might be subjected to financial lures, and who is wielding that influence.

Committees should be required to vote publicly on the disposition of a bill, or at least to provide a public accounting for the reason it was introduced or killed, ending a chair’s power to shelve bills quietly and without explanation.

Further, lawmakers must move away from skirting full legislative review by repurposing unrelated bills — the “gut and replace” schemes that the state’s high court already has shot down.

Many pivotal decisions on bills are made in conference committees. These panels iron out differences outside the public meetings, where essentially the done-deals are rubber-stamped. The public should be able to hear more discussions while the issues are actually still live and in play.

At the commission hearings, the dominant theme of public testimony has been campaign finance reform, which also is warranted. As the state moves through another cycle of its new vote-by-mail system, the spending by campaign and political action committees is quite evident and will continue for several more weeks.

It is not surprising that this has become a focus of the discussion now, given the often-negative advertising on display in the current campaign season. Setting boundaries that shine a brighter light on this system should be an imperative.

It was good to learn that more public hearings are planned before the commission compiles a final report. And that series, to start Aug. 17, will focus on the legislative process, a key piece of the puzzle.

If they haven’t done so already, voters need to fish their ballots off their dining tables, fill them out and send them in. There is now a commission tasked to find solutions to Hawaii’s government ethics lapses. But as always, good government depends on the governed insisting on more open and honest leaders.

It starts with voters choosing candidates who commit to reforms, and holding them to that promise.